That Christmas After-Glow

The “day” has come and now vanished. The chores of sorting through gifts, if one is fortunate enough to have a friend, relative or loved one with a bank account that allows gross expenditures on mostly unnecessary items, is now at hand.

But most a weary Christmas-celebrating-American is now a bit deflated, maybe even a bit disappointed that the “season” of celebrating Jesus’ birth that sends them out with plastic credit cards in hand, searching for more plastic junk to give to wives, husbands, lovers, relatives, family members, friends and unsuspecting co-workers, has come to its seasonal close.

Can one get further in debt? Capitalist America provides the solution with after-Christmas specials to lure debt-ridden Americans back to the stores and malls to add to their financial nightmares.

Yet for most – this Christmas season, the Christmas day now past, isn’t about the junk we’ve received – it isn’t about the number of presents under the Christmas tree that we unwrapped – it’s about those closing moments when family and loved ones depart and one takes a step back, and if only for a few seconds, thinks to themselves as our loved ones are taking their leave… I truly enjoyed just being with you for the moments we had this day. I don’t care of the gifts, don’t care of the gift-cards, don’t care of the what you bought me at whatever mall you felt compelled to visit – I was more appreciative that YOU were present this day, and that the few words we may have exchanged were something more than what a cardboard box with whatever its contents might have contained.

A nation lost in perpetual war against sovereign nations, a nation lost in addressing the needs of its poor, its homeless, its forgotten, its veterans, its sick and dying; a nation lost rewarding the wealthiest 1% with even more wealth, while the ordinary citizen attempts to navigate the maze of “making it to the next day” – this is the real shyte that the daily grind presents each of us.

Speaking only for myself, I’ll take the brief moments during the Christmas season when one friend, one relative, one loved one, experienced a brief dawn of thought, coming to the understanding that all the gifts received, all the money spent, all the stupidity of roaming about city and town in search of some-thing that might convey their love of an individual on the receiving end of a thing wrapped in holiday paper, never comes close to replacing the heartfelt hug and words of “I Love You”, as one takes their leave after a gathering of those in our lives, who are, for better or worse, our friends, our family…our loved ones.